


Long Distance

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Episode: s02e13 Star One, Gen, Implied Servalan/Travis, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25958971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: The message comes through a secret channel, marked top priority and addressed to her and her alone.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 7





	Long Distance

The message comes through a secret channel, marked top priority and addressed to her and her alone. Its origin point is shrouded behind multiple layers of encoding: possibly breakable, given time, but she only has to see Travis’s grimly resolute expression and she knows time is the one thing she doesn’t have. He’s found Star One. It isn’t Blake behind the recent troubles, but Travis, proving once and for all that there’s still a spark of his old fire burning in his heart. She’s almost impressed, even if he does look like he’s been drinking, with several days’ growth of stubble and his hair dishevelled, but for all that he’s a wreck, there’s a dangerous glint in his eye.

“Hello, Servalan.” His voice is low and laced with menace. “By the time you receive this message it’ll be too late. There’s no point trying to contact me. I know very well how… persuasive you can be, but I’ll never get your message in time. I made certain of that. If I gave you a chance to talk me round, you might actually have managed it. Now neither one of us has any choice.” His jaw tightens. “You underestimated me.”

“That has become very clear,” she says softly.

“By now you’ve probably guessed I’ve found Star One.” He holds his hand up, clutching something small between his fingers. “The brain scan. It wasn’t hard to find. You’ll forgive me for not telling you earlier. I wanted to see where I stood first, and you–” He breaks off with a strangled noise of frustration. “Well… I suppose I should be grateful to you for making our positions so very clear. You were never going to let me live, were you? So instead…” He swallows, his face darkening. “So instead I had no choice but to find new patrons. And they’re not nearly as merciful as you.”

“Oh Travis,” she murmurs. “What have you done?”

He can’t have heard her but he lifts his head as if he did. His control is crumbling. For a moment he seems utterly lost, a look of pure despair in his eye. He stares at her, his expression pleading, as if she might be able to reach out through the camera lens and across an unknowable stretch of deep space to cup his cheeks and tell him whatever it is that he wants to hear.

She remembers the controlled arrogant man he was when she first met him, but one too many visits to the retraining therapists have reshaped him into something else. Sometimes when they strip a man back to his component parts, they can’t quite figure out how to put him back together again.

“You should have trusted me, Servalan,” he says, and his voice cracks halfway through.

He closes his eye, slumps back in his seat. When he finally looks back at the camera, his expression has hardened. He’s the butcher again, the man who slaughtered thousands without a single moment’s hesitation. For a few moments, he holds her gaze across the divide between them, before he reaches out to end the recording. “For whatever it’s worth,” he says in the instant before he cuts the feed, “I hope it’s quick.”

Then he’s gone.


End file.
